Melf's Guide to Greyhawk Cover by Jeff Easley Revealed at Gary Con

Luke Gygax revealed the cover to his upcoming collaboration with Wizards of the Coast at Gary Con over the weekend. During an annual auction at the convention, Gygax revealed a painting by Jeff Easley featuring his famed character Melf. According to GamingTrend, which posted the news on Saturday, the painting will be used as a cover for the upcoming Greyhawk compendium being developed by Gygax and Wizards of the Coast, which was unofficially called Melf's Guide to Greyhawk. The painting was won by actor Vince Vaughn, who paid $5,000. You can check out an image of the cover below, courtesy of GamingTrend. More photos of the artwork can be found on that site.

Gygax and D&D Head of Franchise Dan Ayoub announced their collaboration earlier at Gary Con, with Ayoub emphasizing a desire to "mend the rift" between the Gygax family and Dungeons & Dragons. No specifics have been revealed for what the book will entail, other than that it will be set within Greyhawk. Greyhawk is also featured in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide, although at the time Wizards had no plans to further flesh out the setting beyond that book.

Wizards of the Coast also announced at Gary Gon that Gen Con would serve as an announcement hub for upcoming books starting this year, and that modules would be returning in some format tied to the new Seasons approach to promoting material.

 

[TheHand]

Melf's face does look like Luke though. Looks like a Grey Elf with pale grey skin. hair with a silver hue, and eyes like amber.

Ok, I can see it! I’m used to Luke with a beard.

 

[Distracted DM]

I don't know if we ever publicly hears about any specific rift, but a large number of folks like Magianello or Luke Gygax were in with the WotC D&D team for a spell fairly recently, and that fell off hard somewhere along the line. Don't know the exact tea, but it has been years since Luke Gygax did a Thing with WotC, and they were active at GaryCon and then...were less so?

It seemed like executive leadership changes.
Leadership was open to doing stuff with Mangianello (the dragonlance show). Then Hasbro did some shuffling, changed leadership, new leadership didn't want to do it. Now leadership has changed again.. and it seems like they're keen on working with these folk.